A picnic basket-full of them
by Zora Arian
Summary: Molly wishes to have kittens, Sherlock receives scratches, and John is not good at sharing.


"Oh my goodness, this is just too cute…!"

"Now, now, Molly - don't get overboard-"

"But, my God, John - aren't they just the most adorable little things you've ever seen?!"

John took another glance through the transparent glass window and he had to admit, his heart melted just a little bit as well. "Yes, they are rather adorable," he confessed, grinning a little.

Beside him, Sherlock rolled his eyes. "If we're done gazing at 'the most adorable little things we've ever seen', can we get a move-on already?"

"Wait, wait - I wanna go in!"

"**JOHN**. Tell me again why have I agreed to this?" Sherlock turned to the doctor and more or less hissed out the question as Molly pushed the door to the store open and entered it.

"You owe her, Sherlock," John began to remind him as he and the tall man followed after the petite and now enthusiastic woman into the store, "especially after that incident in the lab where you almost blew the place up. She had to answer to her superiors and save your pathetic arse **again**; this is you saying sorry to her, by at least accompanying her on her day off."

"It was necessary, that experiment; I had the foresight of warning Molly about the potential 'blowing up of the place', so she would have known," the other man vehemently defended himself. "And I don't possess a 'pathetic arse'," he added as an afterthought.

"Oh yes you do, Sherlock; yes you do," John cryptically muttered, the detective beside him unable to hear what was said for the noise in the store drowned out his friend's words.

The two men found their woman after much searching and made their way over to her. John smiled at the energetic way Molly was interacting with what was in front of her.

"That thing will be hacking out hairballs any moment now."

"Oh, Sherlock, John!" Startled by their sudden appearance behind her, Molly scrambled to stand up from her squatting position.

"Don't mind him, Molly," the blond assured her, rolling his eyes at Sherlock's comment. "Take your time playing with that kitten; it's your day off, after all."

Beaming brightly at his reassurance, she gave a quiet 'thank you' and turned back to playing with the black-and-white kitten, which paws were attempting to grab at her dangling hand above its head. The storekeeper was squatting beside her, giving her information on the various kittens available at the pet store and helping to answer any questions she had.

"Molly is very adamant on becoming a cat lady as she advances in age, isn't she?"

John nudged his elbow hard against Sherlock's side, who tried to hide the instinctive wince at the pain it caused. "That, Sherlock, was very rude."

"All the signs are there, John: mid-thirties, single, not much of a social life etc etc - and with a house cat to boot, she is definitely on her merry way."

"And are you going to do anything to help her, then?!"

"Might give her one of those books to help her take better care of cats of various types; each have their own characteristics, which will require different methods of care, after all."

"Why did I even bother."

* * *

"I might just get one of those kittens soon," Molly said as they walked down the pavement an hour later.

"See, John?"

"Why?" John asked her, fully ignoring Sherlock.

"Oh, nothing much - I just feel like the apartment needs a little life in it, you know; Toby isn't exactly one of the most active of flatmates."

"I understand; same issue here," John empathetically replied, which earned him a soft giggle from Molly and an annoyed glower from Sherlock.

"Kittens might just get Toby off his tail and make him move around more often," she thought out loud. "God knows he needs the exercise."

"I know how it is to have a rather un-energetic flatmate; things hardly ever get done in the flat, that's for sure."

"Why are you comparing me to that cat?!"

"It's not comparing, Sherlock," he retorted as the three of them turned the corner, "it's the truth. For all I know, you might just have been a cat in your previous life."

"Oh, the excitement it would have brought," Sherlock deadpanned.

"Yeah, Sherlock might really have been a cat," Molly piped in, a tiny smile on her small lips. "I mean, he sure likes it when I run my fingers through his hair; I could have sworn he purred once!"

She giggled to herself, head bent down, and looked back up to the two men. Her whole body and face froze at the expressions they wore: John had an eyebrow raised in question while Sherlock stared blankly at her.

Good grief - her imagination got the better of her again.

"**I MEAN**, OH GOD, I'VE- I'VE never, ever ran my- my fingers through Sh-Sherlock's hair! Never had the opportunity to do so- oh God, that came out wrong! I mean, I didn't- NO, that's-"

"Good golly, Miss Molly - breathe!" John laughed at her spluttering out her words. "You're red in the face, about to turn purple with the lack of oxygen!"

"I- just ignore what I said! I'm- I'm tired, yeah, so my mind's, you know, a bit jumbled up…" the pathologist laughed awkwardly after taking a few deep breaths, as instructed by the blond doctor.

"'A bit'?"

"Sherlock, shut up," John replied sharply, throwing a glare his way for good measure.

"Time to go home, I guess!" Molly announced in a slightly over-the-top voice. "Toby needs his lunch in a few minutes' time, and I guess I should do a bit of looking around for the right cat breed to be a good companion for him, so, uh, I'll be off now!"

With that, the embarrassed woman rushed away from the group, giving one last backward wave to them.

"And they say I'm not good at goodbyes."

"You never say goodbye, Sherlock - there's a difference."

"Verdict, John: future cat woman among us?"

John turned to his friend with a mildly aghast expression. "You're making comic book character references now?" he said, surprised.

"What 'comic book character reference'? What do you mean?" Sherlock frowned at his question.

He, however, just shook his head - of course Sherlock would not know the reference. But the brief image of Molly Hooper in tight black clothing with a whip in hand and cat ears on her head made his cheeks heat up.

"Your face is red, John; why's your face red?"

* * *

Molly almost tripped over one of Toby's catnips laid scattered on the wooden floor as she padded across her sitting room towards the small kitchen. In an effort to avoid stepping and slipping on it by quickly moving to the side, she instead stubbed her little toe on one of the coffee table's legs.

That makes it 3 times over the past 5 days, she thought morosely as she blinked back tears of pain. Really need to shift the table somewhere else.

When her toe finally stopped throbbing, she slightly limped the rest of the way to the kitchen, sighing in relief once she got there. Toby purred as he stalked into the kitchen as well, tail proudly raised high in the air, and rubbed his head against his mistress's leg. Molly bent down to scratch him behind the ear, but suddenly her cat perked up his ears and his head turned towards the front door of the apartment.

Molly, not quite used to this reaction of his, wanted to panic at his abrupt change of demeanor, but as Toby ran towards the door, the bell rang.

Molly stood up and cautiously made her way towards the wooden door, not knowing what to expect. As her door unfortunately had no peepholes to look through, she steeled herself and turned the doorknob, pulling the door just an inch or two open-

-only for Toby to go squeezing through the tiny gap!

Oh God, **NO!** NO NO NO - OH GOODNESS GRACIOUS, CURIOSITY IS LITERALLY GOING TO KILL THE CAT! HER CAT!

On the verge of hysteria, Molly grabbed whatever that was on the small table near the entrance of her apartment -a blunt pencil- and, using it as her weapon of defense, raised it up as she pulled open the door the rest of the way.

"You are not serious in stabbing these 'adorable little things' with an un-sharpened pencil, are you, Molly?"

The poor woman could recognise that smooth, low baritone voice anywhere, in any situation, but what she could not register was the soft sounds that seemed to be around him. Soft mews, more like it.

Wait - mews?

Molly tore her eyes away from the man of her dreams (oh God, he's here, in front of my flat, in front of me…I can die of happiness now) and dragged them down to whatever he was carrying a bit below chest-height. He was holding on to a red picnic basket, and when she stared a little longer, the flap flipped upwards and three tiny little heads popped up from its interior on the right side.

She was sure she had never squealed as hard as she did that late afternoon.

"Sh-Sherlock…? Wh-what-" she stammered, slender hands covering her mouth in an attempt to hold back unwarranted 'squee's.

"Yes, Molly - three kittens are in this basket; you have not seen wrongly."

Toby meowed loudly as he tried to climb up the detective's left leg to get to the basket of felines, whose eyes were fixed upon Molly; Sherlock, in turn, frantically shook his leg to get the cat off. "Molly, you might want to- OUCH, YOU INFERN- CAT, GET OFF- you might want to take the basket from me! Anytime now would be great?!"

Blinking, she obeyed and quickly took the picnic basket from him, the kittens mewing in unison as they were moved, as Sherlock breathed in silent relief when the large cat removed his grip from his leg and winded around Molly's. She stared entranced by the tiny beings as she moved back into her apartment, the curly dark-haired man trailing behind. "What's this for?" she quietly asked him after he closed the door.

"You did mention about adopting kittens a few days ago," he started explaining, "I came across these kittens in an alleyway during one of my walks; abandoned by a girl around the age of seven to nine because her parents do not wish for a colony of cats to dominate their house. I've brought them to the nearby veterinary immediately after I found them, so you do not have to worry about them having contracted diseases and such."

Molly was half-listening to what he was saying, though, but she did caught the parts when he mentioned the kittens being free of diseases. She was about to reply to him, but a thought came into her mind. "Wait - why did you bring them to me?" she questioned, looking at him wide-eyed.

Sherlock turned away and cleared his throat. "You did say you wanted kittens to brighten up your adobe -and boring it is, I may add- so it was only logical I had...thought of you when I saw them."

Smiling softly, Molly muttered a 'thank you' while gazing lovingly at her three new companions. They, in turn, mewled at her, which made her heart melt. She looked up to him and immediately frowned at the state of his forearms. "Sherlock, what's with the scratches?"

He followed her gaze and chuckled lightly. "For small little things, they did put up a good fight."

"Oh dear! Let me- let me find my band-aids!"

With that, the ponytailed woman put down the basket on the floor, allowing the kitten triplets to crawl out and explore her warm apartment as she rushed to the kitchen to find what she needed. Toby sat watching over them, almost in a protective way too because whenever Sherlock tried to come close to any one of them to study their behaviour, he would make a low growl.

"Toby seems to have quite in him a protective nature," he commented, staring at the cat who stared right back.

"Yeah, that's Toby for you," Molly said proudly, returning to the sitting room, and settled on her worn-out sofa, Sherlock sitting down beside her a moment later. "Here, let me treat them..." she quietly offered, not without a blush fully evident on her face.

As she cleaned up the scratches and bruises he had attained from his attempts at retrieving the kittens, Sherlock leaned in to whisper into her ear after hearing one of the orange-white kittens mewing loudly as it played with its siblings, "You know, now is a perfect time to discover if I really do purr when you run your fingers through my hair..."

* * *

"Sherlock, come out of your room!"

"Busy."

"That's a lot of bull crap; get out now!"

"Whatever fo-"

"Come out here and explain to me why is there a kitten on my armchair?!"

"Someone's not open to the concept of 'sharing', I see."

"**SHERLOCK!**"

"I got him from Molly; I'm in the middle of studying his behaviour. Who would ever know that felines would make such interesting test subjects?"

"I don't care how interesting- SHERLOCK, THERE'S A HAIRBALL RIGHT NEXT TO MY CHAIR! God, it's covering everything with cat hair!"

"I believe Mrs Hudson has a vacuum cleaner you could use."

" What 'I could use'- IT'S SCRATCHING MY SEAT! Sherlock, get it into your room or something!"

"'It' is a he, John; even in cat form, I'm sure you, as a doctor, could tell a male from a female."

"Get him off of here! Or I'll do it myself!"

"Not wise, that plan of action; Hamish is rather-"

"**OUCH!**"

"-easily agitated when carried, and tends to lash out; interesting, isn't it?"

"...thanks for the warning..."

"My pleasure."

* * *

Nope - as you can guess, John ain't a cat person :P I do hope to own a cat one day; just hoping I don't get one that lashes at me when carried... YAAAY I posted up another 'normal!lock' story, after quitE a number of teen!lock and kid!lock (and cat!lock ;P) *confetti* I do hope you have enjoyed reading this! :DDD


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